Although political economy of the Islamic system is as old as the Quran, the renewed interest in the study of Islamic Political Economy (IPE) among the muslim and non‐muslim scholars is of comparatively recent origin. As an emerging discipline and operational system, IPE needs to demarcate clearly its methodological boundary. What is the ontology of IPE? What is its scope and subject matter? These are some of the questions which are briefly addressed in this paper.
This paper considers the way the outbreak of coronavirus and the subsequent lockdown has egregiously impeded the Hindu death ceremonies and mourning rituals in India. It makes a comparative analysis of how Hindu death rituals get renegotiated, modified and reinterpreted across two vastly different regions of India, both of which have their local customs. Whilst death rituals in India are contingent on the deceased’s caste, community, class, gender and age, the impediment to the major death rituals creates a central conundrum for all mourners. It results from the substitution of ‘sacred’ ritual guidelines with new ‘profane’ ones for the ‘disposal’ of deceased COVID-19 patients. Departure from many significant pre-liminal rites, specific transition rites, and post-liminal rites has eschatological, ritual and cultural ramifications. The inability to grieve in unison during a Shraddh ceremony denies mourners any scope to quell distressing feelings about mortality which serves as a source of consolation.
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